= William I. McAlexander
{c}
= W. I. McAlexander
{c}
{synonym}
An experimental researcher whose team observed <degeneracy pressure> in a trapped gas of <atoms> obeying <Fermi-Dirac statistics>. Cooling a fermionic cloud alongside a bosonic one lets their sizes be compared under common experimental conditions. The fermionic distribution resists the concentration expected for a classical gas because the <Pauli exclusion principle> prevents identical <fermions> from all occupying the same low-energy state. The cloud’s spatial profile therefore makes a consequence of quantum statistics directly measurable.<Observation of Fermi Pressure in a Gas of Trapped Atoms by Andrew G. Truscott and others>[Printed pp. 2570–2572 and Figs. 1–3: trapped-cloud comparison and evidence for Fermi pressure]{ref}
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